Greek bank Piraeus sets date for approving CoCos

ATHENS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Greece’s fourth-largest lender Piraeus Bank will seek shareholder approval on Jan. 21 for its contingent convertible bond issue of up to 2 billion euros, it said on Friday.

Battered by the country’s debt crisis and a protracted recession, Greece’s top four banks will be recapitalised by issuing contingent convertible bonds, known as CoCos, and new shares.

The central bank has set Piraeus’s total new capital requirement at 7.3 billion euros ($9.7 billion).

The CoCos will be fully taken up by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF), set up to recapitalise the country’s banks.

Piraeus Bank, which took over the healthy assets of state lender ATEbank and agreed to buy Societe Generale’s Greek unit Geniki, lost 629 million euros ($833 million) in the nine months to end-September. ($1=0.7568 euros) (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Greg Mahlich)